Incentive travel Tuscany

Between this range and the coast is a series of irreg-ularly alligned ridges, usually between 600 and 1000 me­tres in height (say, 2-3 thousand feet), stretching north-west and south-east between Montecatini and Monte Amiata. This is the so-called Antiappennino, in the centre of which is the system usually known as the Colline Metallifere. The plains, other than those along the coast, occupy the basins of the rivers Arno, Chiana and Tiber.
In view of the usuai ratio between plains and river basins, it is not surprising that a region with so little fiat land is endowed with a rather modest network of rivers. Given both the moderate rainfall and the prevalence of impermeable soils, even the major water-courses have a meagre flow, and even this is very seasonal (an excep-tion is the Serchio, which rises in the high Apennines south of the Cisa Pass, in an area with heavy rainfall and permeable limestone soils). Though liable to both drought and flood (as we saw during the great flood of 1966),
the Arno with its 241 kilometers in length and its tribu-taries from the left (Chiana, Pesa, Elsa, Era) and from the right (Sieve, Bisenzio) is the most impressive river in the region. Next comes the Ombrane (lól km.), with its trib-utary the Orcia, then the Serchio (103 km.).